


halfway 'round the world

by smilebackwards



Series: Washington's Modern Spies [1]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 13:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6908350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ben transferred from analyst to agent, the CIA had forced him to cut his hair into the most nondescript shape possible and have Lasik surgery done to fix his eyesight. The black-framed glasses Caleb had once pushed up on Ben’s nose and told him looked cute are just a prop now. Frankly, Ben’s amazed Sackett didn’t tell him he needed to have his fingerprints burned off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	halfway 'round the world

**Author's Note:**

> New OTP. I’m sorry to the historical figures these characters are based on.. Also, pretty much anything I know about the CIA or the Navy is from watching Covert Affairs and NCIS so I’m sorry for that too.

He’s in Yemen when he sees Caleb. 

Ben feels himself freeze. 

Caleb sees him at the same time. “Ben?” he says, shock coloring his voice.

_Shit._ There’s protocol for this. Ben knows what he’s supposed to do: try to salvage it, half turn to look behind himself and say, “Sorry, who?” with the British accent he’d watched hundreds of hours of BBC America to perfect. Front hard, disappear quickly, and deny it later. 

That would never work with Caleb. Caleb’s known Ben longer than Ben’s known himself. Ben has a picture his mother took framed on one of his bookshelves: sixteen-month-old Caleb, just walking, holding the edge of newborn Ben’s bassinet with tiny hands and peering curiously inside. He doesn’t think Caleb’s looked away from him since.

Ben pulls Caleb into an alleyway and presses him back against the cold stone, a hand over his mouth. Caleb kicks him in the shin, but he’s always pulled his punches with Ben. It barely even registers.

“Caleb, calm down,” Ben says, as Caleb continues struggling against his hold. “Calm down.”

Caleb goes slowly slack and Ben removes his hand from over his mouth. “Jesus Christ, Ben,” Caleb hisses immediately and Ben re-covers his mouth and starts dragging him, unresisting, through the back streets Ben mapped out by satellite as soon as he’d taken this assignment.

Ben’s basecamp is a corner room in an abandoned building with a floor mattress for a bed and an LED hand lantern for light. It has running water at least, which makes it better than some of the other safehouses he’s stayed in. He turns to Caleb, who’s looking around in horror, and says, “So. I think we’re here for the same reasons.”

Caleb stares at him. 

“Arms dealing? Money being funneled to extremist groups?” Ben prompts. There’s zero other reason for Caleb to have been taking the exact kind of reconnaissance photos Ben had been on his way to acquire. It’s not like Yemen is a tourist destination. The fact that they’re both here is just more evidence of failed communication between government agencies.

“What the fuck, Ben. What the _fuck_ ,” Caleb says, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “You can’t be a spy. You’re a school teacher. You teach ninth grade history in the same classroom we learned out of a decade ago.”

“Well, yeah, I did,” Ben agrees. He’d taught for two years before Sackett recruited him to the CIA. He doesn’t like to blame Nathan, but really it is Nathan’s fault. Apparently, if you don’t want your best friend from college to get recruited to your spy agency, you shouldn’t gush about how brilliant he is and his facility for languages and crossword puzzles. 

Ben unholsters his Glock and puts it on the table. The easiest and coldest proof.

“You have a gun,” Caleb says, staring. 

Ben makes an executive decision not to tell him about the ceramic knife in his boot or the razorwire sewn into his belt. He hasn’t had much occasion to use them anyway. Just the once in Brazil and the other time in Lebanon. “Yes.”

“Ben, you can’t do this to me,” Caleb says. His eyes are tearing and Ben feels like the worst person in the world. “Do you remember how worried I was when you took that trip to Rome to see the Colosseum and all that historical shit you love? I thought you got all the adventuring out of your system with that.”

Ben’s used to being steady as a rock. He didn’t mean to shake Caleb’s foundation like this. “I’ve never been to Rome, Caleb,” Ben says, as gently as he knows how. “I was in Tel Aviv that July. I’ve been to São Paulo, Taipei, Kraków. I can handle myself.” 

“What about you?” Ben asks, redirecting. “Naval Intelligence? Have you always.. Was _Sam?_ ”

Caleb shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I was transferred after I re-upped the last time. Seriously, Ben, you were a _school teacher._ ”

“Nathan may have inadvertently gotten me noticed by his bosses at the CIA,” Ben says.

Caleb’s hands clench into fists. “I’ll kill him.”

Ben swallows. “You may not have to,” he says, quiet. “He’s missing.” 

Nathan was on a solo mission in Singapore when all communication went dark. Ben had been dispatched the next day and he’d spent three thousand dollars over the budgeted limit on informants and come up with precisely nothing. He’d also ignored the summons back to Langley for long enough to be considered AWOL. 

They’d sent Agent Townsend to bring him in and Robert’s perpetually expressionless face had looked so genuinely regretful that Ben had gone with him without much fight. Robert had taken out a game of travel checkers to occupy them on the long flight home, but after Ben lost three consecutive games, he’d quietly put it away and let Ben stare out the window at the wide, dark expanse of the ocean.

It’s been almost six months now. By the time Ben gets back from this mission, Nathan will either be waiting for him on the green with a hug and an apology about needing to go deep cover or he’ll be a star on the wall. Ben’s trying not to think about it.

Caleb softens immediately. “I’m sorry, Tallboy,” he says.

Ben nods. He doesn’t say it’s all right, because it’s not. He’s tired of losing people, of the threat of it. He wishes sometimes, almost more than anything, that he could go back to when his life made sense, before everything derailed.

-

Sam calls Ben via sat phone from six hundred miles off the Cape of Good Hope.

“I noticed I didn’t get ten pages about life at Yale,” he teases immediately.

“Sam,” Ben groans, because Sam learned about Ben’s embarrassing crush on Caleb all the way back when Ben was sixteen, but almost four years later, he still hasn’t learned to shut up about it. 

“You know I love you, baby bro,” Sam says, “but for a genius, you can be pretty dumb.”

“I heard you call someone pretty,” Caleb’s voice says, muffled in the background. “Are you talking to Benny boy?”

“Sure you can have my phone time,” Sam says, long-suffering, and this time it’s his voice that’s muffled. Caleb’s is right up close in Ben’s ear when he says, “Tallboy, you there? I want to hear more about Yale.”

Ben really did send him ten pages about it, but that was weeks ago. Getting mail to a naval carrier is slow and sporadic at best. Since then, Ben’s found the best coffee shop on campus, he’s started writing a paper on the importance of espionage in the American Revolution, he’s met Nathan Hale. Ben has a hundred new things to tell Caleb and it all spills out of him in waves until someone yells, “Jesus, Brewster, the rest of us have girlfriends too!”

“Fuck off!” Caleb yells right back, and then to Ben, “That all sounds great, Tallboy. Just don’t forget me. Your brother’s all right for company, but you know I’ll always love you best.”

“I know,” Ben says, smiling, because for all that Caleb is closer in age to Sam, that he’s spent the past years side-by-side with him through Basic and on deployment where Ben mostly gets snatched weeks and phone calls, Ben has never doubted that Caleb holds him sacrosanct, even if he doesn’t love him in quite the way that Ben wants.

-

Ben graduates summa cum laude. 

Caleb tweaks the tassel on his mortar board and Sam cries. Ben’s father takes a picture of the three of them that Ben puts on his desk so he has something to smile at when his class can’t remember the Fourth Amendment or he thinks too hard about how Sam and Caleb are halfway around the world again. 

He thinks this is going to be his life.

-

When Caleb shows up at Ben’s door five months before the end of his and Sam’s latest deployment, Ben grabs him into a hug immediately. The medals on his chest dig into Ben’s skin but Ben doesn’t let go.

It’s when Caleb pushes him gently back that Ben knows something’s wrong. Caleb’s never broken a hug first. “Ben,” Caleb says, his voice an anguished crack. 

Ben looks at him. He’s in his dress blues. If it had been any other officer at Ben’s door, he would have known what it meant immediately. “No,” he says, “Caleb, no.” But Sam’s dead.

Myocarditis from an acute stage infection of _Trypanosoma cruzi_ , Caleb tells him, and Ben’s studied history, he knows that soldiers died by the thousands from exposure, smallpox, dysentery and everything in between, but this is the twenty-first century. He remembers Sam complaining about the dozens of innoculations he and Caleb had to suffer through before they shipped out.

Ben doesn’t remember much after that, not for a long time. They buried Sam in Arlington, in a sea of white graves. Someone gave his father a flag. Nathan had been there. Ben thinks Caleb held his cold hand for the full three days before his emergency leave was up and Ben had to watch him driven away in a cab. 

Caleb calls him every week after like clockwork. Ben’s not sure how he gets the phone time. Is he trading away his dessert rations? Swapping for night shifts? He knows Caleb and Sam tried to call him as often as they could, and Ben used to be lucky to hear from them once a month. 

Caleb does most of the talking. Ben used to be the one that talked but lately he can hardly remember what he had for breakfast. If he had breakfast. 

He thinks he taught his class the unit on the Articles of Confederation twice and skipped the Constitutional Convention. The kids look at him with sad eyes. Setauket is a small town; they all know what happened. One of the girls in Ben’s homeroom goes by Sam and she comes to his desk after the bell rings and asks if he’ll call her Samantha from now on, she’s trying something new. The kindness is like a knife.

Ben goes to his father’s house for dinner on Sunday nights. Sam’s chair has been empty for a long time but it’s so much worse now, to know that it will never be filled. Ben feels like someone’s struck a match on his heart. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his father walks him to his old room and tucks him into bed like a child. He puts a hand on Ben’s forehead and says something, a snatch of a prayer Ben ought to remember, but Ben can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

-

By the time Caleb’s deployment is up, Ben has reached enough of an equilibrium that people have stopped hovering over him. 

He waits at the dock, in the uncomfortable press of other family and friends, for the ship to anchor and when Caleb disembarks and wraps Ben up in his arms, Ben feels his face stretch into a smile for the first time in a long time.

It’s a beautiful summer. Caleb is based out of Annapolis and he drives the five hours to Setauket every weekend to force Ben out of his apartment and into the world. They go to the movies and walk along the shoreline, pick apples in the orchard behind Caleb’s old house and sit down in the grass to eat them. 

Ben can feel the warmth of the sun all the way down to his bones. It’s like the halcyon days of their childhood, save for the gaping absence of Sam at their side.

By the time the leaves start to turn and Ben is setting up his classroom for the new school year, he loves Caleb more than ever.

-

Ben doesn’t expect Caleb to re-up. When he tells Ben he’s signed on for two more years in the Navy, on the same ship Sam died on, Ben stands up and walks out the door despite the fact that they’re in Ben’s apartment. He falls asleep over his desk, stacked high with papers he should have taken home to grade, rather than go back to face Caleb and all the time Ben’s going to spend missing him again, all the time he’s going to spend in agonized waiting for some other officer to show up at his door. 

When he wakes up in the morning, Caleb has called him nine times, leaving increasingly frantic voicemails, and maybe he was right to worry because Ben honestly can’t remember driving to the high school and unlocking his classroom. 

Ben doesn’t call him back. He successfully evades Caleb for a week and a half, right through the night before Caleb is set to ship out. 

Caleb knocks on Ben’s apartment door, even though he has a key, because he’s never forced anything on Ben, and says, “Ben, please. Can you just tell me goodbye?” He waits there for ten minutes, knocking softly and repetitively, and Ben sits two inches away with his back against the door between them, folded in on himself so he can muffle his sobs into his forearms, and feeling like the worst sort of coward.

He wakes up at 5:45 the next morning to a text that says _i’ll miss you_ , followed by three cruise ship emojis and thinks _no, no, no._ Ben speeds all the way to the quay and practically flings thirty dollars at the parking attendant in the lot closest to the loading dock when he’d usually park half a mile away because it’s price gouging and Ben has student loans to pay back for Yale on a teacher’s salary. 

Caleb is halfway up the gangplank, bent down rummaging through one of his bags, and Ben yells, “Caleb!” at the top of his lungs. 

Caleb’s head snaps up immediately, his eyes had zeroing in on Ben like a missile. He ducks and weaves around the rest of his unit, who laugh and whistle as he runs by, until he’s standing in front of Ben, his smile as wide open as his arms.

Ben throws himself at him without reserve. “I’m sorry,” he says, gripping Caleb’s shoulders. “Caleb, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Caleb says, against his temple, one hand petting back Ben’s hair. “I’m sorry too. You know I’m always sorry to leave you.”

“Be careful,” Ben begs him.

“You too, Tallboy,” Caleb says, as if there’s anything in Ben’s life more dangerous than the collective boredom of a hundred high school students he’s trying to teach about The Federalist Papers. “Don’t forget I’ll always love you best.”

Caleb pats Ben on the cheek the way he always does before he leaves him behind and Ben thinks at him, as forcefully as he can, _kiss me, please,_ but Caleb doesn’t get the message. He tugs Ben close one more time and then runs back up the gangplank to where his friend has been pushing his bags along. The guy punches Caleb in the shoulder and says something, tossing his head back toward Ben. _Your boyfriend?_ maybe. Ben wishes Caleb would nod. Instead, he shakes his head and says something back that Ben can’t make out. _Sam’s brother,_ probably, because his friend punches Caleb in the shoulder again, but much more gently. 

Ben is watching the USS _Monmouth_ inch toward the horizon when someone clears their throat beside him and says, “Excuse me, you wouldn’t be Benjamin Tallmadge, would you?”

-

Sackett recruits Ben ruthlessly. Eight months on the heels of his brother’s death. Literally at the docks, watching his best friend sail away. Part of Ben is still alert enough to recognize it and, in all honesty, he thinks he admires Sackett for it more than he resents him. 

“Would you like to serve your country?” Sackett asks him, peering at Ben through small round spectacles.

Ben considers himself to be serving his country by shaping the minds of the next generation. Or at least ensuring that they understand the balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. It’s a long game though. There’s appeal in the idea of doing something with quicker, more easily measured results.

“How exactly do you mean?” he asks.

-

Ben starts out as an analyst. In between being Nathan’s eye-in-the-sky and listening to excruciatingly boring tapes of chatter someone up the chain has dubbed suspicious, he writes a hexadecimal cipher based on Latin conjugates that Sackett tells him has promise.

Then he causes a minor incident that has a major effect on his career trajectory.

Ben is minding his own business, reading a book on spy protocols that Sackett recommended to him out in the open space of the green, when he hears Agent Bradford talking shit about President Washington. Ben bristles indignantly. Aside from being their goddamn commander-in-chief and therefore worthy of their respect, Washington has just signed an education bill into law that, had Ben still been a teacher, would have meant he’d get enough funding for new textbooks and classroom materials without having to dip into his own paycheck. 

Bradford is an asshole for a multitude of reasons, but Ben considers this crossing a line. “You want to shut up, Bradford?” he suggests.

Bradford smirks. He leans right into Ben’s space. “You want to make me, Tallmadge?”

Ben isn’t sure what Bradford expects him to do. It probably isn’t to put down his book and use a takedown move that he’d asked Anna to teach him one morning in the gym. Analysts aren’t required to keep up more than basic physical fitness, but Ben has never been one for meeting only the minimum requirements. 

Bradford stares up at him from the flat of his back, more stunned than truly hurt, and Ben retrieves his book and walks away.

Anna comes by his desk later in the day with a vanilla cupcake from the commissary. “Ben,” she says, “I’m so proud.” She prods him out of his chair and hugs him tight. “I think we should practice throws next. Meet me in the gym tomorrow at six.” 

The story makes its way to Director Arnold, which is where the real problem comes in. Arnold is amused enough that he insists they train Ben for field missions.

Ben thinks he’ll be good at it. He speaks five languages, gets top scores on the obstacle course, and can make a headshot with his sidearm from a moving vehicle. And he signed his life away in a hundred different non-disclosure agreements. He doesn’t really have a choice what the agency uses him for.

Nathan looks like he wants to die of guilt. “It’s dangerous, Ben,” he says, but it takes six whole missions for Ben to be shot, and even then it’s only a flesh wound. A through and through to the shoulder by some mercenary with an old-school hunting rifle and a Scottish accent. 

“You’re very lucky, young man,” Sackett says, after Ben gives his report from his bed in the infirmary. “Robert Rogers has killed three of our agents in the last year alone. To escape him is a victory in itself.”

Ben doesn’t doubt it. He’d had to steal a jacket, wade through a river, and spend four hours in the back of a produce truck to evade Rogers. On the plus side, the produce farmer had turned out to be an expat and Ben had convinced him to be an ongoing source of intel.

Ben’s lucky streaks have never lasted long. He’s finishing out his last week of physical therapy when Nathan disappears.

-

“Why is the Navy involved in this?” Ben asks Caleb, tabbing through the recon photos Caleb took before they’d collided and flipped each other’s worldviews. There are some good shots of the harbor. Six different boats with sealed shipping crates on the decks. There could be guns in any of them. Or none of them.

Caleb shrugs. “I just go where they tell me, but the arms are being shipped by boat.”

“I’m following the money,” Ben says, handing Caleb the postcard Sackett gave him of a missing Monet. Ben’s never particularly cared for the Impressionists, but there’s something soothing in the colors. “This was stolen last year and seen recently in Oman by one of our operatives.” Abigail had apparently pretended to be very impressed when the owner showed it off to her. “The CIA suspects it’s being used as currency for the buy. Easier and less suspicious to transport than two million in cash.” 

Caleb looks at the postcard. “Despicable but smart.”

“So which boat do you think we should check first?” Ben asks.

“ _We?_ ” Caleb says. “There is no _we_ here, Ben. I’ll be starting with the sloop on the south side, and you’ll be staying right here.”

“Fine,” Ben says, as evenly as he can, because indignation has never gotten him anywhere with Caleb, “If you want to split up, I’ll start on the north side.”

Caleb makes a frustrated noise. “ _Ben._ ”

“Don’t ask me not to do my job, Caleb,” Ben says, quietly. “I never asked that of you.”

Caleb looks at him for a long moment. “All right, Ben,” he sighs. “But I’m on point. And take the goddamn safety off your gun.”

Ben knows it’s the best offer he’s going to get. He holsters his gun and stays a step behind Caleb all the way to the harbor. They search the sloop, but it’s a genuine fishing boat, full of rope and nets and the smell of herring. The second boat has crates of silks and fabric. The third has men. 

Three men to be precise. They look like every stereotype of henchmen Ben’s ever seen: tall, muscular, with forbidding expressions on their faces. One of them has a scar starting at his eye that goes all the way down his left cheek.

Caleb puts a protective arm in front of Ben, like they’re in a car that’s stopped too fast.

“You are looking for guns, yes?” the man with the scar says, with odd nonchalance. “FNP-90s?” He makes a gesture with his hand; a closed fist, then suddenly opened. _Poof._ “Gone. Days ago now. American intelligence moves slowly.” He smiles. “We do not move so slowly.”

Scar goes for the gun at his hip but Caleb strikes his wrist before he can fire. The gun clatters across the deck, stopping against a coil of rope. 

Ben doesn’t have time to reach for his own gun before one of the other two men is on him. He blesses Anna silently as he executes a throw she taught him. Ben doesn’t give the man time to recover. He kneels down, grabs him by the hair, and slams his head against the deck. Twice, just to be sure. 

It leaves his back open and Ben feels his breath rush out of his body as the other thug kicks him solidly in the kidney. Caleb is struggling against Scar, what looks like a giant serrated knife in his hand, but he keeps throwing anxious looks at Ben. _Focus!_ Ben wants to yell at him as he forces himself to stand. 

Ben takes another hit to the kidney before he’s fully upright and then two punches to the face. He feels dizzy, like the boat’s come unmoored. 

“Genevieve!” Caleb yells and Ben ducks automatically because six years later he can still feel the sting of her slap. The thug he’s fighting obviously doesn’t have the history to translate “duck” and gets hit full in the face with Caleb’s fist.

Ben twists around to look for Scar, since Caleb’s obviously decided they need to trade opponents, and finds him with his hand curling around his lost gun.

Ben feels his heart thud in his chest. He quick-draws his Glock and aims it between Scar’s eyes. “Don’t move!” Ben yells. He doesn’t pull the trigger. Ben’s hit people, cut people, choked them down to unconsciousness. He’s never killed anyone.

Something of it must show on his face because Scar says, “You don’t have it in you, boy,” and moves, his gun swinging around toward Ben. Thirty more degrees and he’ll have a straight bead on Ben’s heart.

Ben doesn’t want to kill him, but he doesn’t want to die, to be another flag handed to his father. He doesn’t want Caleb to have to see him trying to catch his breath through the blood in his lungs. 

Ben pulls the trigger.

After the loud report of the gunshot, the night is deathly silent. Ben has blood on his face from the blowback. He doesn’t know how he became this person. He wonders if Caleb still recognizes him.

Caleb’s hands grip Ben’s face. “ _Ben,_ are you _all right?_ ” he says, like he’s said it before with no response.

“Yes,” Ben says, hollowly. “I”m fine.”

Caleb pulls him toward the ramp. He angles Ben away from the body, but Ben can see it over his shoulder. The eyes are open, a bullet hole between them; a perfect headshot. He looks surprised.

“You’re a machine, man,” Nathan used to say, admiringly, looking at Ben’s perforated targets at the shooting range.

Caleb navigates them back to Ben’s safehouse unerringly. He pushes Ben down to sit on the mattress, then goes to the sink and comes back with a damp hand towel. He wipes it gently across Ben’s cheek. 

Ben thinks he would have flinched from anyone else, but it’s so ingrained in him that Caleb would never hurt him that when the psychologist who’d done his mandatory agent eval had given him a word association test, when she’d said _safe,_ he hadn’t said _house_ or _bank._ Ben said _Caleb._ The psychologist had forced down a smile. She’d passed him with flying colors.

Ben wonders what she’d think now. He can hear his father’s preaching voice in his head. _Thou shalt not._

Caleb squats down in front of Ben, anchors his hands on Ben’s shoulders, and looks him straight in the eye. “You did what you had to do, Tallboy,” Caleb says. “That man would have killed us both.”

Ben looks at him oddly. “He was only aiming the gun at me, Caleb.”

Caleb nods. “And it would have killed me to lose you.”

Ben kisses him then, after ten years of waiting, at the most awful, inopportune moment.

Caleb kisses him back. He threads his hands into Ben’s hair and then, suddenly, pulls away. He looks like it’s gutting him to say it but he says, “Ben, are you sure?”

“I’ve loved you forever,” Ben says, honest. “I didn’t think you—”

Caleb surges forward, toppling Ben backwards onto the mattress. “Ben,” he says, between deep, aching kisses into Ben’s mouth, “What exactly did you think I meant”—quick nips at his jawline—“when I said that I’d always”—tender brushes against his closed eyelids—“love you best?”

Ben makes a sound, high in his throat.

Caleb stops him when Ben reaches for his belt. “Second base only tonight, Tallboy,” he says. He leans down to whisper in Ben’s ear, “When I fuck you for the first time, it’ll be in a proper bed.”

Ben shivers. He can wait. He’s been waiting a long time. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to get Caleb’s shirt off tonight.

Caleb obviously has the same idea, because Ben’s t-shirt is coming up over his head. Caleb freezes when he sees the starburst of scar tissue on Ben’s shoulder, eight inches from his heart. Caleb’s actually seen him since it happened, but by the time his leave came around, Ben hadn’t needed to pack the wound anymore and he’d been able to pass it off as shoulder strain from lifting too many copies of US History textbooks.

“It’s all right,” Ben says, flexing his shoulder to show the truth of it. It only hurts when it rains. He reaches for the buttons of Caleb’s flannel shirt, but the urgency has gone out of it. He just wants to put his hands on Caleb’s skin.

Caleb has the traditional sailor’s anchor tattooed on his chest. Ben remembers when he got it; during Fleet Week back when Ben was still at Yale. Ben should have been studying for finals. Instead, he’d taken the train up to New York and spent the whole week getting kicked out of bars and falling asleep in Caleb’s bed in the tiny hotel room they’d shared with Sam. Caleb had gotten the tattoo on the last day. He’d asked Ben to hold his hand while the artist inked him, though Ben thinks that was more for his own sake than Caleb’s. 

Ben traces the twist of rope spiraling around the shank of the anchor with the tip of his finger. He’s surprised Caleb was allowed to keep the tattoo when he went to Intelligence. When Ben transferred from analyst to agent, the CIA had forced him to cut his hair into the most nondescript shape possible and have Lasik surgery done to fix his eyesight. The black-framed glasses Caleb had once pushed up on Ben’s nose and told him looked cute are just a prop now. Frankly, Ben’s amazed Sackett didn’t tell him he needed to have his fingerprints burned off.

Ben thinks, logistically, he ought to be the big spoon, but he just wants Caleb to hold him. He pulls Caleb’s arm across his waist and Caleb settles behind him immediately, his lips pressing quickly against the nape of Ben’s neck. 

“Go to sleep, Tallboy. I’ve got you,” Caleb says, and Ben lets the rest of the world drop away.

-

Ben’s glad that Caleb made him wait, because after they get back to D.C. and finish the disastrous debrief with Sackett, Director Arnold and Caleb’s boss on teleconference, he finds himself needing to hold onto his headboard for dear life. He’d imagined Caleb would swear like the sailor he is, but it’s Ben who can’t stop saying, “Fuck. Oh, _fuck. Caleb._ ”

Caleb says Ben’s name over and over, reverently, like a prayer, and then things like, “God, you’re so gorgeous I can’t even believe it,” until Ben’s flushed from pleased embarrassment as much as exertion. 

“So? Good?” Caleb asks smugly, after, curled around Ben like a comma. “Best ever?”

Ben doesn’t say anything.

“No?” Caleb says, sounding surprised but not stung. “I’m sure I can get better with practice. Is there something else you like? Do you want to top?”

“No,” Ben says, looking up at the ceiling. He can feel a flush starting up again in his cheeks. “I just don’t have anything to compare it to.”

Caleb rolls up on his knees so he’s hovering over Ben, looking him in the eye. “Ben, this was your first time?” he asks, softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Ben says, confused. “I enjoyed it.” His neighbors could probably hear how much he enjoyed it. “I just never saw what the big deal was. You’re the only person I ever wanted.” Ben had taken the seminar on seduction during his training and the agency had passed him through it, but he’d noticed none of his missions ever included a romantic component.

“We don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to,” Caleb says. “I never want you to feel pressured into it.”

Ben laughs. “Please,” he says, pushing Caleb’s earnest face away playfully. “The only thing you’ve ever pressured me into was eating more cookies.”

“You should eat more cookies, Ben,” Caleb says sincerely. “In fact, I’ll go find you some now.”

He rolls over to the edge of the bed. Ben grabs him by the waist and drags him back. “Don’t you dare get out of this bed to go scavenge my apartment for cookies. I guarantee you I don’t have any.”

Caleb comes back to him willingly. “But really, you’d tell me, right?” Caleb asks. “If you were ever uncomfortable?”

“Of course, I would,” Ben says, and tucks himself, comfortably, under Caleb’s arm. 

-

For Ben, the Naval Gala is mostly an excuse for him to get to see Caleb in his dress whites. He’s vaguely aware that the President is invited, in the way that the President is always tacitly, if not explicitly, invited to all events in D.C., but Ben doesn’t expect to see him.

He expects to meet him even less, so when an unmistakable voice Ben’s heard on television for years says, “Lieutenant Brewster,” Ben almost chokes on an hors d'oeuvres. 

“Mr. President,” Caleb says, smoothly, “Nice to see you again.” He pats Ben gently on the back. 

Ben is going to kill Caleb. He hopes his eyes are appropriately telegraphing that, along with _why the fuck does the President know your name?_

Washington looks at Ben. “And this is?”

“Ben Tallmadge,” Caleb supplies, grabbing Ben’s wrist and towing him closer to the conversation. Ben’s feet feel stuck to the ground.

Washington’s face barely moves and yet somehow manages to give the impression that he’s intrigued. “Not Mr. Sackett’s Benjamin Tallmadge by chance?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben says. 

“He’s told me a great many good things about you. Perhaps you can join us for one of the agency updates he’ll be presenting next month.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben says again. Out of five languages, they’re the only two words he can remember.

Washington nods regally and moves on to speak to another group of sailors. Ben watches him go.

“Honestly, Ben,” Caleb says, nudging him in the ribs, “Get the stars out of your eyes. He’s just the President, not Beyoncé.”

“You—,” Ben starts furiously, ready to use a slightly more gentle version of the takedown he performed on Bradford on Caleb, but Caleb’s laughing. “You bastard,” Ben sighs, and steals Caleb’s champagne. 

Caleb immediately snags another glass from a passing waiter. 

“Why does the President know your name?” Ben asks.

Caleb doesn’t answer the question, which is how Ben knows there’s a heroic and horrifying story behind it. “C’mon, Tallboy, I’ve got some more people for you to meet,” he says, tugging Ben by the sleeve of his tux and weaving them a path to a group of sailors in the corner.

“Brewster!” they cheer, clapping Caleb on the back.

“Assholes!” Caleb choruses back, fondly, before he makes proper introductions. “Ben, these are Lieutenants Selah Strong, Austin Roe and Walter Havens. Guys, this is Ben Tallmadge.”

Their smiles disappear at Ben’s last name. “Sam’s brother,” Caleb confirms. He raises his glass in salute and the others follow suit.

Selah breaks the solemn moment before it stretches too long. “You’re Ben? God, the amount of phone time I lost to this motherfucker over poker because of you was astronomical,” he complains, goodnaturedly.

Caleb reaches for Ben’s hand, threading their fingers together. “Learn to bluff better.”

“Guess you got your wish,” Roe says, smirking at Caleb. Ben recognizes him from the docks. The sailor who’d pushed Caleb’s bags along when he’d run down the gangplank to meet Ben. Ben watches in fascination as Caleb’s cheeks turn a delicate pink. 

Roe turns to Ben. “That’s what he said, after you saw him off,” he explains. “I asked if you were his boyfriend and he said, ‘Don’t I wish.’ Saddest fucking thing I ever heard.”

Ben can feel his cheeks heating to match Caleb’s. 

Caleb raises Ben’s hand to his lips so he can brush a kiss across Ben’s knuckles. “Well I got my goddamn happy ending, didn’t I?”

There’s a chorus of awwws, sincere and teasing all at once. 

Havens runs a hand along his smooth-shaven cheeks, properly aligned with the Naval standards of grooming. “How are you getting away with the whiskers, man?” he asks Caleb, eyeing the short beard growing in along Caleb’s jaw enviously.

Purposeful differentiation from the Naval standards is actually the main reason the Intelligence branch is allowing it, but Ben knows Caleb can’t explain that to his old shipmates.

“Medical dispensation,” Caleb says, innocently.

“‘My boyfriend thinks it’s hot’ is not a legitimate medical reason, Caleb,” Ben says, low, so no one else can hear, but he’s not really upset. It is hot. And it’s good camouflage. 

“I have sensitive skin, Ben,” Caleb says with mock offense.

Ben rolls his eyes. Across the room, his attention catches on Anna in a floor length black dress with a plunging neckline. She looks like a sheathed knife. 

Selah follows Ben’s gaze and his mouth drops open comically. He hands his drink off to Caleb blindly and walks slowly toward Anna like she’s a siren singing him toward his death on the rocks.

“This is an interesting development,” Caleb muses, watching.

“That’s my co-worker,” Ben says, dismayed. “I don’t know why she’s even here.”

“Even better,” Caleb laughs. He kisses Ben on the cheek. “To interagency collaboration,” he says, grinning, and taps his champagne flute against Ben’s, the chime of crystal ringing pure.


End file.
